


It's Not Pretty

by sariagray



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bukowski, Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:03:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariagray/pseuds/sariagray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A train leaves London for Leeds at 1:42pm. Two men are on it. This is a brief moment between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not Pretty

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by analineblue. Poem by Charles Bukowski.

_I met a genius on the train  
today  
about 6 years old,  
he sat beside me  
and as the train   
ran down along the coast  
we came to the ocean  
and then he looked at me  
and said,  
it's not pretty._

_it was the first time I'd  
realized   
that._  
-Bukowski

 

13:42, his mobile says, when the train car lurches forward. The last digit flips to a 3 and then a 4 and then a 5, and he finally feels justified in saying “a quarter to” under his breath, and then, “Are you hungry?”

It’s a little over two hours to Leeds, which would normally be fine, just fine, but Sherlock Holmes gets bored easily, and John Watson is not a nanny (despite having been tempted to put together something of a nanny bag – but with bone shards instead of marbles, vials of blood instead of finger paints). He’d brought a novel for himself, something hastily grabbed from the shelves in the sitting room, but he isn’t keen on reading it right now so he rests it on the empty seat next to him.

“No,” Sherlock says, and John hadn’t really expected any other answer. Besides, he isn’t sure if this train even serves food.

He takes in their surroundings. It’s a bit strange, he thinks, that he sometimes longs for the days of steam trains – it’s not as if he’s lived through them. But he’s seen them on the telly, and he imagines they’d be grand and private and a little bit romantic, in the classic sense. A woman in smart traveling clothes and a fetching hat would enter their section, a worried tick manifesting itself in the curve of her lips. She’d have been tailed by a man, out for some sort of revenge, and she’d desperately seek their assistance.

The story in John’s head stops there; they’re already headed towards one mystery, no need to invent another. A woman found dead, her husband missing, and a love nest in Leeds (near a church or an abbey or some such – he hasn’t gotten all of the details out of Sherlock yet). John is sure that the husband is guilty, which means it was probably not the husband at all.

The train is fairly empty, it being midday and midweek and mid autumn. There are a handful of people dressed for business, on their laptops or their Blackberries, and a mother reading from a pasteboard book to her child. Sherlock has probably already determined each of their histories, but John prefers speculation and storytelling, the more fanciful the better. It almost feels like granting a boon, giving these people much more interesting motivations than they would otherwise own.

“We’ll be there a bit gone four,” he says.

Sherlock nods, but is probably not listening. Instead, his knuckles tap on the window. It’s a strange pattern – John’s _sure_ it’s a pattern, even though to his eyes it starts and stops in eccentric and unpredictable fits. He bites the bottom of his lip, too, and fidgets, looking out of the window. 

It’s raining gently, the drops just heavy enough to leave their wending impressions on the smudged windowpane. The sky, though overcast, is the light grey of morning that seems to dampen whatever vivid foliage they’d be able to see on a brighter day. It matches the color of Sherlock’s bored eyes, which fits the journey perfectly.

He hasn’t exactly uttered the command to be entertained just yet, but John leans closer anyway, his hand resting almost imperceptibly on Sherlock’s knee.

“That woman three rows down,” he whispers, “the one with the blue jumper and the little girl?”

Sherlock turns his head slightly and nods.

“She’s going to flee the country. They won’t do well at first, of course, because they’re so dependent on the woman’s parents right now, but –”

“John. It’s obvious that the child has a rare form of –”

John shoots Sherlock a look, one that he usually reserves for the most heinous of offences – actions that go far beyond emasculating Anderson or leaving body parts lying around the flat or testing his hypothesis on the shattering of china saucers using Mrs. Hudson’s best set. 

Sherlock frowns, but at least his mouth is sufficiently closed. The silence stretches for a bit, but he is still and quiet. John watches him. Finally, Sherlock sighs.

“ _Why_ is she fleeing the country?”

“Well,” John says, as seriously as he can muster, “she wants to join the circus, of course.”

Sherlock chuckles. He says, “The circus, John? Really? I’m told that’s no life for a child.”

“It’s the perfect life for a child. Candyfloss and big cats, acrobats, the whole lot of it.”

“And her education?” Sherlock looks amused, but the words slip out of his mouth like they’re well known, like they’re something he’s heard many times before.

John shuffles back into the seat, gets comfortable, and tucks his chin down in thought. He can feel Sherlock’s eyes on him, can hear the analysis ticking within his brain faster than a clock until it all becomes one persistent whir.

“She’s a genius,” he says. “She’s more intelligent than her peers, than her teachers. She’ll be fine. She’ll thrive, in fact, I suspect. She’ll be happy.”

And maybe they’ve moved on from talking about this poor, unsuspecting duo. Maybe they were never really talking about them to begin with, John supposes, though he had tried initially. Reality – the moral of the story – always manages to sneak its way in, no matter what a storyteller does to prevent it. 

“ _But initially_ ,” Mycroft had told him, “ _he wanted to be a pirate._ ”

In a way, John supposes he’s been saying (all along, since the first day he met Sherlock Holmes, even if he didn’t know the right words at the time), ‘I’d let you be a pirate. I’d let you be whatever you wanted.’

Sherlock gives him a piercing, ponderous look. His eyes seem stretched out, a little rounder, like what he’d seen had actually managed to surprise him. Almost cautiously, he places his hand over John’s. It’s still encased in a leather glove, despite the warmth of the train car, and it feels oddly cool against John’s bare skin.

Then Sherlock lets out a deeply held breath, seems to completely deflate with its release, and looks from the little girl to the window.

He says, “It’s not pretty,” and his voice is so low that John has to lean over to catch the tail-end.

And he’s not sure if Sherlock means the girl’s future, the realities of childhood fantasies, or the ultimate curse of getting what you want. He’s also not sure if it matters.


End file.
